Reason I ask is, a while ago I was parked on a moon which the game said had a rotational period of over 3 days, it was just after sunset and too dark to take some screenies, so I decided to wait a bit. Logged on again about six hours later and it was sunrise already. Conversely, I'm currently in orbit on the dark side of a planet which the game says has a rotational period of 1.1d, I've been checking every few hours for nearly a full (realtime) day now and still hovering in the midnight shade.
How accurate are the listed rotational periods?
- Thread starter BradHann
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as the rotational period is the period around its own axis - did you check how fast it rotates around the planet it is orbiting? depending on constellation it can stay in "new moon" much longer... in that case it is rotating around itself in the shadow of its parent body. a bit like if our moon would rotate around itself - you have nearly 7 days of no to very few light on it.
I have sat and watched the sun come up a few times, on low rotational period bodies it takes a long time, on short rotational period bodies it is indeed much faster, of course that's only an observation that they rotate at different speeds, but a few people have done long period time lapse (basically full rotational period) so if it was off by much it would have been discussed quite a bit, you won't believe how picky we can be here
I wouldn't count on them too much. The info displayed *or* the in-game rendering can be faulty. As you can witness on this thread, I've encountered a seemingly impossible situation; the only explanation we could find was that the game glitched.
![[VR] optimal_909](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/109/109067.jpg?1553781733){kind=avatar}
Once I returned to a planet with high orbital eccentricity, that had a 4.5 day orbit - I estimated when it will be about its closest position against the parent star and the actual timing matched my expectations. Tthe only issue I know is that Earth's position doesn't respect the actual season and time we're in.
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Several questions:
What was your latitude?
What was the axial tilt?
Was the planet in a binary (or was it a moon?)
Rotation period for earth is 24 hours, but a day length vs night length can vary completely at any ratio. And they can also be half of the orbital period if at high enough latitudes.
Moons and close binary orbits can also have a mismatch between the perceived day night and rotation period for several reasons
What was your latitude?
What was the axial tilt?
Was the planet in a binary (or was it a moon?)
Rotation period for earth is 24 hours, but a day length vs night length can vary completely at any ratio. And they can also be half of the orbital period if at high enough latitudes.
Moons and close binary orbits can also have a mismatch between the perceived day night and rotation period for several reasons